China and India: Still Hungry for Coal
by ilene - September 10th, 2010 7:29 pm
China and India: Still Hungry for Coal
By Marin Katusa, Chief Energy Strategist, Casey Research
One can only hope that the “Don’t shoot the messenger” adage is still popular in the international community.
UK-based consultants M&C Energy Group have become the latest to join the chorus of voices asking the international community to increase the pressure on China and India to switch to cleaner energy sources.
As far as energy analyst David Hunter is concerned, it is the Western businesses that are carrying the financial burden of reducing carbon emissions. China and India, on the other hand, are benefitting from much cheaper energy, and their companies don’t have to bear the costs of reversing the effects of global warming.
Mr Hunter, however, should steel himself for disappointing news. Industry experts are expecting anything but a cut in coal demand for the foreseeable future.
By their analysis, global coal demand – already at a record high – will remain strong even as the recession cuts down on oil and gas use. And the numbers are certainly matching up to these expectations.
India’s coal demand is expected to reach 653 million tonnes this fiscal year, with only 572 million tonnes expected to be produced in the country. The China National Coal Association expects demand to grow by 4-6% in 2010 and the coal consumption to expand to roughly 3.4 billion tonnes.
And with power-starved economies to feed and millions of people to lift out of poverty, neither country is going to take kindly to any interference with its energy agenda.
There are two different types of coal – in fact two different types of demand – when it comes to the coal market. Though they can’t be considered to be totally separate, the criticism levied against these two Asian tigers becomes somewhat blunted when we take this angle.
The first is for thermal coal, the cheapest and most popular way for emerging economies to produce electricity. Almost 75% of China’s electricity comes from coal-fired plants, but this picture is rapidly changing.
Irritated by the “world’s biggest energy consumer” sticker, Beijing is investing heavily – US$736 billion – into clean energy investment plans. The aim: increase the non-fossil fuel supply component to 15% of the total primary energy demand by 2020. So really, Mr Hunter’s desire for a less coal-intensive China might just come true. As for India,…
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JP Morgan’s Commodities Trading Head Blythe Masters to Troops: “Don’t Panic”
by ilene - August 3rd, 2010 5:56 pm
“FASCISM SHOULD MORE APPROPRIATELY BE CALLED CORPORATISM, AS IT IS THE MERGER OF CORPORATE AND GOVERNMENT POWER. THE TWENTIETH CENTURY WILL BE KNOWN IN HISTORY AS THE CENTURY OF FASCISM. DEMOCRACY IS BEAUTIFUL IN THEORY; IN PRACTICE IT IS A FALLACY. SOCIALISM IS A FRAUD, A COMEDY, A PHANTOM, A BLACKMAIL. FOR FASCISM THE STATE IS ABSOLUTE, INDIVIDUALS AND GROUPS ARE RELATIVE. IT BELIEVES NEITHER IN THE POSSIBILITY NOR THE UTILITY OF PEACE. FASCISM IS A RELIGION." BENITO MUSSOLINI
JP Morgan’s Commodities Trading Head Blythe Masters to Troops: "Don’t Panic"
Courtesy of JESSE’S CAFÉ AMÉRICAIN
Note to Blythe Masters: Sorry to hear about your losses in the coal market because of a ‘rookie error’ in taking on overlarge positions, but an epic short squeeze is coming for your massive and untenable positions in silver and gold, and hell is coming with it.
And the vampire squid and its minions are going to wrap themselves around your neck, and inexorably suck the life from you, while the hedge funds lick your wounds. Your protectors in the government will not even return your calls, because they will be running for their own lives away from the disaster that you created, denying all knowledge of it, any of it.
And then, by all means, you may panic.
Bloomberg
JPMorgan’s Masters Urges No `Panic’ as Commodities Unit Slips
By Dawn Kopecki
Aug 03 2010Blythe Masters, JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s head of commodities, sought to reassure her team on an internal conference call after “extremely difficult” dismissals, defections and a first half in which some results were as much as 20 percent below expectations.
“Don’t panic,” she said in summing up the 35-minute call, a recording of which was obtained by Bloomberg News. “No one’s going to get screwed. We’re not going to do crazy things on compensation at the end of the year.”
Masters, who was named to run the business in late 2006, said the bank began dismissals on July 21, a day before the call, to trim overlap after buying parts of RBS Sempra Commodities LLP. The bank cut less than 10 percent of the combined front office, even as the oil unit lost “key people” who needed to be replaced, she said. She was discussing results with top executives after “we made a bit of
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Even China Gets It: Natural Gas > Coal
by ilene - June 21st, 2010 5:53 pm
Even China Gets It: Natural Gas > Coal
Courtesy of Joshua Brown, The Reformed Broker
I never understood President Obama’s fealty to the "clean" coal industry lobby. I also didn’t appreciate the President’s lumping in of natural gas with the rest of the "fossil fuels" during his Oval Office address this month. Sure, nat gas is a fossil fuel by definition, but it’s way cleaner than coal and exponentially more abundant on American soil than crude oil is. It’s also more feasible for things like buses and trucks than solar, geothermal, corn, hamster wheels, etc.
Anyway, China is now seeing the light on natural gas according to reports this morning. They plan to double their usage of it – at the expense of their coal use – by 2015.
From Platts:
China plans to double the natural gas share of its total energy consumption basket from the current 4% to 8% by 2015, a source close to the country’s National Energy Administration said Monday.
The shift would come at the expense of the share of coal in the mix in order to increase its use of cleaner energy, the source added.
On Saturday, China’s administrator of the national energy administration Zhang Guobao told a closed-door session at the APEC meeting in Fukui, Japan, that the country was working on raising its natural gas share in the primary energy mix to boost energy efficiency.
China currently uses coal to meet 70% of its energy needs. Renewables, including hydro, oil and nuclear power account for the remainder. The source said that oil usage would remain unchanged at 26% from 2011 through 2015.
Why is the transition to natural gas so obviously advantageous to seemingly everyone except the denizens of our nation’s capital? What is it about a safer, cleaner, more domestic fuel source that they don’t understand?
We’ve talked about the pending American Power Act that congress is expected to vote on over the next few weeks.
In that bill is a $64,000 tax credit per truck for each heavy vehicle switched over from diesel to compressed natural gas. Hopefully, China’s move this morning adds some urgency and confidence into the process so that congress realizes that this is a "do".
I’m hoping for a job-creating revolution should the Act pass, as infrastructure, exploration, storage and transmission capabilities across the country are upgraded. There are estimates that say over a half million jobs…
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The Black Death
by ilene - April 12th, 2010 11:05 pm
The Black Death
By RALPH NADER, writing at CounterPunch
The tragedy at the Massey Energy Company’s very profitable Upper Big Branch coal mine at Montcoal, West Virginia, which so far has cost 25 miners’ lives, is another reminder of the immense human and environmental cost of this fuel.
More coal miners have lost their lives from cave-ins, explosions and lung disease since 1900 than all the Americans who died in World War II. The devastation extends to chronic sickness from breathing coal dust and to maimed coal miners, often seen walking on crutches in the hollows of Appalachia.
During our struggle in the late sixties and seventies to get Congress to authorize the federal government to regulate these pugnacious corporations, and protect among the most defenseless workers in our country (try working 700 to 1800 feet underground six days a week), coal company executives perpetuated a culture tolerant of safety violations. Coal companies are known for greasing their way with political campaign contributions, gross underpayments of property taxes and intimidation of people in poor coal mining country who had few alternative employment opportunities.
Safety and health improvements finally came from the forces of the law 
(especially the Coal Mine Health and Safety Act of 1969) and from an awakened United Mine Workers union. The safety efforts have had to overcome industry lawyers, lobbyists, corporate cover-ups, refusals to pay fines and other misbehavior stemming from unaccountable corporate bosses sitting in fancy offices far from the coal fields.
Half of the nation’s coal companies were fined a modest total of $7 million under the first Bush Administration for faking coal dust samples in 847 underground mines. This is just a cost of doing business instead of a serious deterrent to an epidemic of deadly coal miners pneumoconiosis.
Until new leadership came under Joseph Main in 2009 to run the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA), Richard L. Trumka, former coal miner and head of the United States Mine Workers (UMW) union and now president of the AFL-CIO, said that George W. Bush converted “MSHA from an enforcement agency to a business consulting group” to King Coal.
With the sharp decline of UMW workers, as non-union strip-mining expands, studies have shown a consistently better safety record of unionized coal mines. The devastated Massey mine was non-union.…
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Philip R. Davis is a founder Phil's Stock World, a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders...
Ilene is editor and affiliate program
coordinator for PSW.